Closed Bug 943408 Opened 11 years ago Closed 11 years ago

Remove Entire "Feature"

Categories

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox for Android Graveyard
Component:
General
Platform:
x86_64
Linux
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: brendieellen, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:25.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/25.0 (Beta/Release) Build ID: 20131112154159 Steps to reproduce: The Top Sites experiment should have never made it into a build. Please remove it. There is no way to even clear this mess. I find it hard to bkeve that it was put on the first UI tab. Not being able to clear the list is inapproprite for mobile use. Some companies use tablets for work, but no provision was made for use for more than one person. Top Sites was a privacy mistake. Actual results: Top sites logged all my browsing for anyone to read.
> The Top Sites experiment should have never made it into a build. Please remove it. While you feel that we should remove a core component of our about:home design, we have not heard this stern viewpoint elsewhere. Nevertheless we are most definitely continuing to iterate to make the experience of using top-sites better with a large overhaul of the about:home experience with top-sites included starting in Firefox 26 (Firefox Beta on Google Play) and continuing upwards in channel. As for the crux of your bug here on removing top-sites, yes, we agree, we have open bugs on investigating a remove function for individual top-sites (bug 913457) and perhaps making it easier to ignore or drop all top-sites. These are known enhancements we plan to address. I've CC'ed Ian from UX who might want to comment on other plans in the works.
Hi Brenda! In addition to the work Aaron mentioned about adding the ability to remove unwanted top sites, we are also building some more flexibility into the Firefox Home screen experience, by providing a way for you to choose which panel appears by default, and even to add and possibly remove panels if desired. This work is a little further out than the "remove top site" feature that Aaron describes, but I wanted to let you know we are thinking about more other ways of making Firefox Home a more customizable experience :)
I should also add that Private Browsing and Guest Browsing are both great features for keeping your browsing data from appearing at a later unwanted time, and they both exist right now in Firefox -- you could try using those right away.
It's all to easy to forget to open a private tab. I wish instead that the user had better basic privacy--rather being told they only should expect privacy in certain areas. Functionality like this assumses that mobile devices are never lost.
I feel bad that functionality like this was giving priority over the aphabetized bookmaks, bookmark backup/restore, and MAF support, which would have made Firefox mobile more useful than shiny/neat.
Hi Brenda, Coming up with the priorities is never an easy job, as inherently not everyone is going to agree. Therefore as the product manager for Firefox for Android, I've been working hard at looking at the overall audience that is using our browser and trying to meet the majority's needs and expectations. As you can imagine, when we're spanning multiple countries with different experiences and expectations for their mobile devices, I'm sure you can appreciate that not everyone is going to agree with the decisions made. The overhaul around about:home - and the use of Top Sites - is one that we have received lots of positive feedback on. But we also recognize the need for more customization / personalization abilities, and as Ian has referred to, many improvements are on the books to make it feel more like 'your' ideal browsing experience. Also, I would like to reassure you that every feature we introduce, it goes through a privacy review to ensure it adheres to Mozilla's current privacy policies. We do take privacy and security very seriously, and we strive to provide our audience with a powerful experience at no expense to their privacy expectations. We also have a balanced roadmap - sometimes not as visible - that includes many 'under the hood' improvements that aren't user-facing, but rather ensuring that our engine is well oiled. Things like performance, graphics improvements, developer improvements, etc that are focused not on the mainstream 'shiny/neat' stuff, but also ensuring we have a top-to-bottom approach in our constant efforts to make the best mobile browser out there. On the topic of bookmarks, we have found that the user feedback we get from our mobile users is that they don't rely on bookmarks very much (if at all), therefore we have been improving the ways to discover your most frequently (and recent) content with as few taps as possible. We try to be data-led (which means listening to our users - current and prospective) for many of the improvements we make, and we try to strike a balance across all experience levels, mobile usage expectations and audience. I truly welcome your feedback and have made notes (since I value negative feedback as a source of improvement for us) and would like to hear back from you once we have landed more of customization features around the about:home to see if this better fits with your browser usage. Please also feel free to provide more explanation of how you use your browser (you mentioned enterprise? sharing with other people?), as it provides more context into what frustrates you about the features we land. Many thanks, Karen
I understand that priorities are a challenge, but I should think that most keep enough bookmarks to want them sorted. It would seem people who do not need bookmarks add little content to the internet, have an bandwidth consuming over-dependance on search engines, and view their computer/tablet/phone as a toy more than a tool. In the new screen, the Top Sites, Bookmarks, History as looks even more a webpage, which is in itself questionable UI design. We still have no way to clear the top sites, which is baffling in this age of identity theft and NSA Constitution breaching, here in the US, well, abroad as well. I frequently use my tablet as a social device with real people. I show other people my tablet computer. I cannot believe that Firefox has such a paranoid browsing mode, and yet, the leave the barn door open. I don't want a separate mode for separate things. I want the Top Sites function gone. [At this point, it is my hope that Mozilla.org is not going to use the Top Sites to force feed advertising to us.] The front page does not remember that I browse by my bookmarks. As a user, I check a (unsorted in Firefox Mobile) list of bookmarks to see what is happening on each. Even browser history UI, is often useless because it inconsistently granular. The Top Sites function is pointless to me. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjGXn249Fc0 Not being able to clear the Top Sites function fails this statement: "Also, I would like to reassure you that every feature we introduce, it goes through a privacy review to ensure it adheres to Mozilla's current privacy policies. We do take privacy and security very seriously, and we strive to provide our audience with a powerful experience at no expense to their privacy expectations." I will again reiterate that the rendering engine in Firefox Mobile works well, but the UI needs work. It is one thing to ask for feedback; please consider it. Thank you, BrendaEM
We are looking into a different bug (bug 934030) that would potentially require allow for hiding some types of visits from Top Sites. This same feature could be used as the basis for allowing the user to manually hide certain visits/sites from the Top Sites thumbnails. We are also looking into expanding control of the Home pages, like Top Sites, potentially hiding whole pages (bug 942875). I don't know if we are planning to allow the level of control that would make it possible to hide just the thumbnails.
Depends on: 942875, 934030
Depends on: 949105
No longer depends on: 934030
Per site is an additional thing for the user to manage. As a user, I don't want to have to beg the browser for each morsels of privacy!
If the function comprimises your mission statment, then you have lost your way.
(In reply to Brenda Make from comment #9) > Per site is an additional thing for the user to manage. > > As a user, I don't want to have to beg the browser for each morsels of > privacy! Hey Brenda, you may have missed Mark's second point in comment 8 -- we're actually working on an interface in Firefox's Settings that lets you reorder *and even hide* the pages you see on the Home screen. This is the mockup the team is working from, that I hope will give you a better idea of what I mean https://bug942875.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8345401 Our hope is that this will offer a better experience for folks like yourself who would prefer a browsing experience with a less visible history. A lot of people love our home screen, but flexibility and customization is a core part of our design values so we hope this can map Firefox a little more closely to the needs you've described :)
Why was the use not permitted to clear it in the first place? For privacy, the user must me allowed to clear that data, not just hide it.
Why was the (user) not permitted to clear it in the first place? For privacy, the user must me allowed to clear that data, not just hide it.
I am sorry, where is anyone discussing the clearing of the list data, or is Mozilla.org planning on doing something with that information. The problem remains.
(In reply to Brenda Make from comment #14) > I am sorry, where is anyone discussing the clearing of the list data, or is > Mozilla.org planning on doing something with that information. The problem > remains. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Projects/My_List:_Manage_current_lists_in_settings Feel free to follow along with our project page. If you feel there is a use-case missing, feel free to post and comment about it on mozilla.dev.platforms.mobile (newsgroups) or file an enhancement request. Groundwork for the project will be starting to land and be usable for testing in Nightly very shortly As for this bug, there is nothing actionable, so I am closing this.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Product: Firefox for Android → Firefox for Android Graveyard
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